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5 - The Problem of Slavery Reconsidered

The South, the Nation, and a Reflection on “The Travail of Slavery”

from Part III - Understanding Slavery, Race, and Inequality in the American South

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2024

Lacy K. Ford
Affiliation:
University of South Carolina
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Summary

This chapter focuses on historian Charles Sellers’ argument that by the mid-nineteenth century, many white southerners, influenced by the spirit of American democracy and the values of evangelical Christianity, could never fully embrace the proslavery argument and maintained only a half-hearted commitment to the region’s peculiar institution based on economic necessity and racial fear. Sellers argued that most white southerners experienced moral unease if not full-fledged guilt over how to justify living in a slaveholding society. In Sellers’ view, this “travail of slavery” burdened white southerners throughout the late antebellum period and even beyond emancipation. Subsequent scholarship initially supported Sellers’ argument that white southerners experienced varying measures of guilt over slavery. But during the 1970s, an array of new scholarly studies revealed that most white southerners eagerly defended slavery as a necessary institution and accepted the racial justification for slavery and thus retained a deep commitment to white supremacy.

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Chapter
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Understanding the American South
Slavery, Race, Identity, and the American Century
, pp. 115 - 138
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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